CoalTownQuilter

I'm wondering how many of you do this and what your experience has been! I own a Janome 350e and am contemplating giving this a try. Sure sounds like a lot of work hooping and re-hooping but would save alot of money on longarming.

Weezy Rider

I've done piece in the hoop, and quilting in the hoop. Easy way to deal with raggies.
You can use fancy stitches to batten down sashing and borders.

Queen of Stitching has a lot of Quilt in the Hoop, not to mention Quilt as you Go. Books on straight line quilting which use fancy stitches. "One Line at a Time" comes to mind.

If the largest you can do on a 350 is a 5X7 hoop, most designs come 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, and some larger.
I found an 8" block worked just fine with a 5X5 design.

Sewfriend

I own a Janome 350 and have made quilts for the grandchildren by embroidering the fabric first and then squaring up the blocks to the size required, Then I go on to construct the quilt as per directions. I find this much easier than quilting in the hoop. Currently I am finishing the embroidery on a queen size quilt with 12" embroidered squares. However the approach of Christmas has pushed it aside for the present time.

lynnie

when I worked at the casket co, I had a 15 needle TAJIMA, and quilted my stuff all the time on it. it was great for runners and stuff, got them done very quickly

Gladmaker

I finished a quilt a few weeks ago with my Brother SE400. It has 99 8" blocks with hand embroidery in half of them and machine embroidery in the other half. I didn't want to quilt over the embroidery so I hooped each block 4 times to embroidery a design in the corners for the quilting. (I did stitch in the ditch around each block first.) That is a lot of hooping! I probably won't do that again, but it did turn out nice. The hooping is harder because of the thickness of the quilt. I had to really bear down on the hoop to get it to go into place. I was afraid I would break my hoop before I got finished, but I didn't.

SittingPretty

I guess it would really work better to use a snap hoop or a magna hoop. Just wish they weren't so expensive, but they are machine specific.

Nammie to 7

I've used the embroidery machine also -- not much different than using a computer guided LA (in outcome anyway) Just make sure to adjust your tension so the stitches meet in the middle rather than use the embroidery tension where the stitches are pulled to the back.

ann31039

with thick stuff i don't snap the hoop on. I hoop the stabilizer and pin the quilt to it, or sometimes i will machine baste to the stabilizer inside the hoop. the hoop will fit under your sewing machine to machine baste. just depends on the item.

nabobw

Do it all the time I hoop without any problems but run the machine very slow

Capri

I have tried everything pretty much from piece in the hoop to actual quilting in the hoop. There are limitations with everything and you need to use the method that best suits at the time. I find I get little satisfaction (which is why we all do this in the first place) with piecing in the hoop compared to when I make the blocks myself - despite their usual wonkiness. Don't ask me how I do it, but I continually am "off" just a smidgeon every time!

I do like to use the endless hoop for quilting narrow borders and it is quick and easy. It's restricted to the width of the hoop though so you need to choose designs that can easily be added to by free motion stitching if you wish to make it a wider border than the hoop width - ie on an 8" border, the design is always closer to the edge and looks silly sitting "out there".

This is what I found:

The cost is prohibitive factor. You need to really be in love with the design as you have to use it an awful lot to justify the price and get real value for money. Water soluble stabiliser is also costly compared to regular tear away. Piecing in the hoop is fabulous but again, you need to piece an awful lot of that block/item to be cost effective.

Availability: well, you can download a picture of anything from the internet, stitch it on the paper without thread, turn it over and pounce. Voila! Same for piecing - you can find free block/quilt patterns everywhere.

Time wise the actual quilting stage is much quicker to do it yourself. You need alignment markings on both methods. Pouncing time vs hooping ie squaring it up to the hoop then pinning the quilt to the stabilizer (wss). Only the stitching time is quicker with hooping.

I made the decision to use the emb machine for the little jobs and am putting my time into learning to free motion quilt properly on my regular machine. It can be done by anyone on any machine provided you've got a darning foot and you're not trying to do a king size with a 350e lol and the satisfaction that I get is way up there. The stitches aren't perfectly sized, nor always totally symetrical but noone seems to even notice when they get a quilted item from me. There are sooo many Youtube vids out now, you are being taught by experts for free and I really like that!

You really should try the emb machine for yourself but not with a costly design. Embroidery Library have single designs that are relatively inexpensive for you to try and obviously the designs will come out perfectly if you pin to wss instead of trying to hoop, it's important to get as much value for money as you can and there are many, many quilters/stitchers now who would never have dreamed that they could do what they now can because of it. That is a good thing.